Coolest Science Stories of the Week

Cool Science

<p></p><p>The Ig Nobel Prizes, the fate of the Universe and the road to Stonehenge are just a few of the cool stories we brought you this week.</p> <p>Check these out.</p>

Highlights from Ig Nobels

<p></p><p>Amid a flurry of paper airplanes, hosts adorned with little more than silver body paint, and the world's first and only opera about a centrifugal-force birthing machine, the 2013 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded tonight (Sept. 12).</p><p> The Ig Nobels, which are awarded each year in the historic Sanders Theater on the Harvard University campus, honor scientific research that makes people laugh, then makes them think — and then makes them laugh again. The science is real, and though it's been published in prestigious, peer-reviewed academic journals, it all has considerable popular appeal.</p><p>[Full Story: <a href="http://www.livescience.com/39627-ig-nobel-prizes-highlights.html" target="_blank">
Ig Nobel Prizes: A Duck-Gnawed Penis & Dung Beetles Steal the Show</a>]</p>

Creature sports leg gears

<p></p><p> Gears are ubiquitous in the man-made world, found in items ranging from wristwatches to car engines, but it seems that nature invented them first.</p><p> A species of plant-hopping insect, <i>Issus coleoptratus</i>, is the first living creature known to possess functional gears, a new study finds. The two interlocking gears on the insect's hind legs help synchronize the legs when the animal jumps.</p><p>[Full Story: <a href="http://www.livescience.com/39577-insects-with-leg-gears-discovered.html" target="_blank">
Creature with Interlocking Gears on Legs Discovered</a>]</p>

Universe fate depends on tiny particle

<p></p><p> The universe may end in another 10 billion years or sooner if the heaviest of all the known elementary particles, the top quark, is even heavier than previously thought, researchers say.</p><p> If the top quark is not heavier than experiments currently suggest, then an even stranger fate may await the cosmos: disembodied brains and virtually anything else could one day randomly materialize into existence.</p><p>[Full Story: <a href="http://www.livescience.com/39604-doomsday-universe-fate-depends-on-mass-of-tiny-particle.html" target="_blank">
Doomsday? Universe's Fate Depends on True Mass of Tiny Particle</a>]</p>

Voyager 1 has left the solar system

<p></p><p> Voyager 1 has left the solar system. The big news that the spacecraft reached interstellar space on Aug. 25, 2012, after its decades-long sojourn begs the question: Just how far did it have to travel to knock on cold, dark space's door?</p> <p>In other words, just how big is the solar system that earthlings call home?</p><p>[Full Story: <a href="http://www.livescience.com/39620-how-big-is-solar-system.html" target="_blank">
Voyager 1: How Big Is the Solar System?</a>]</p>

Long-lost van Gogh painting found

<p></p><p> A major new painting by Vincent van Gogh has been discovered after it spent decades locked away in an attic, suspected to be a fake.</p><p> The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam unveiled the long-lost landscape painting today (Sept. 9) following an investigation that showed the style, technique, paint, canvas and subject matter matched with other works from the peak of the Dutch artist's career.</p><p>[Full Story: <a href="http://www.livescience.com/39496-lost-van-gogh-painting-discovered.html" target="_blank">
Long-Lost Van Gogh Painting Discovered</a>]</p>

Stonehenge road discovered

<p></p><p> Scientists have uncovered a portion of an ancient path that may have led to Stonehenge.</p><p> While dismantling a modern road that runs near Stonehenge, the archaeologists uncovered two ditches found to be remnants of an ancient pathway called the avenue. Archaeologists have known of the avenue and suspected it led directly to the monument, but the modern road had cut the delicate pathway in two, obscuring its purpose. The new discovery confirms the avenue's role as an ancient pathway to the site. </p><p>[Full Story: <a href="http://www.livescience.com/39539-stonehenge-ancient-processional-found.html" target="_blank">
Ancient Road Leading to Stonehenge Found</a>]</p>

Is cosmos shaped like saddle?

<p></p><p>The shape of the universe may be dramatically different than before thought, a group of researchers now says.</p><p> Researchers investigating a major anomaly in the afterglow of the Big Bang suggest the fabric of space and time may actually be curved like a saddle, possibly upending the currently leading notion that light and anything else traveling through spacetime zips through a "flat" universe in straight lines. In a saddle-shaped universe, however, any object that seems like it is traveling parallel to another item will actually veer away from it after vast distances.</p><p>[Full Story: <a href="http://www.livescience.com/39580-data-opens-possibility-of-a-curved-cosmos.html" target="_blank">
Data Opens Possibility Of A Curved Cosmos</a>]</p>

Thinnest glass nabs world record

<p></p><p> Researchers accidentally discovered the world's thinnest sheet of glass, just two atoms thick.</p><p> Their chance finding — now immortalized in the 2014 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, out this week — gives scientists a glimpse into the puzzling properties of glass, which behaves like both a solid and a liquid.</p><p>[Full Story: <a href="http://www.livescience.com/39595-world-record-thinnest-glass.html" target="_blank">
By Accident, Researchers Set World Record for Thinnest Glass</a>]</p>

Phone sensors meld with human body

<p></p><p> Microscopic sensors and motors in smartphones detect movement, and could one day help their cameras focus. Now scientists have devised components for these machines that are compatible with the human body, potentially making them ideal for use in medical devices such as bionic limbs and other artificial body parts, researchers say.</p><p> The technology is called microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS, and involves parts less than 100 microns wide, the average diameter of a human hair. For example, the accelerometer that tells a smartphone if its screen is being held vertically or horizontally is a MEMS sensor; it convert signals from the phone's environment, such as its movement, into electrical impulses.</p><p>[Full Story: <a href="http://www.livescience.com/39552-mems-phone-sensors-human-body.html" target="_blank">
Phone Sensors Could Meld with Human Body</a>]</p>

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